


If It’s Not Love, Then It’s the Bomb

by spacestationtrustfund



Series: Letyat zhuravli [1]
Category: Black Widow (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: 1960s, Cold War, Families of Choice, Gen, Identity, Kid Natasha, Red Room, Soviet Union, Space Race, improbable lunar colonization strategies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:34:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21831511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacestationtrustfund/pseuds/spacestationtrustfund
Summary: “We sent a man to space,” Natalia says.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Natasha Romanoff
Series: Letyat zhuravli [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/286848
Comments: 42
Kudos: 310





	If It’s Not Love, Then It’s the Bomb

**Author's Note:**

> Baby Natasha Romanoff and the Winter Soldier were totally BFFs, don't ruin this for me.

“We sent a man to space,” Natalia says.

He glances at her; she’s glaring into her soup like the explanation for space travel is contained within.

“Well,” he says, for lack of anything better.

He thinks, distantly, that there used to be a soldier who would have been fascinated by such knowledge. A man in space: it seems impossible. But then again: so does a man with a metal arm.

Natalia wrinkles her nose, stuffing a pampushka into her mouth. “The Americans want to put a man on the moon now, so they can say they beat us—because we beat them into space, see? But I want to go.”

“To the moon?”

“Why not?”

He doesn’t have a good answer for that. “You’d freeze to death,” he says.

Natalia laughs, dropping another one of the pampushki into the wooden bowl of soup. “I’m _Russian_. All we have left is our winter. The Americans have super-soldiers and nuclear bombs and capitalism, but here, we only have the winter.”

“The Americans don’t have super-soldiers anymore,” he says, although he has no idea how he knows this. "Stop waving your hands around."

Instead, she gestures impatiently, almost landing her elbow in the bowl. “They have the bombs! You know they want to bomb us, but they know that we would bomb them right back, if they tried.”

“I don’t think the Americans are going to bomb us,” he tries to say, but can't finish the sentence. He doesn’t know that. Why would he know that?

Natalia barrels on, unconcerned. “Anyway, no one has managed to defeat a Russian winter. Napoleon couldn’t do it, Aleksandr couldn’t do it, Hitler couldn’t do it, Karl XII couldn’t do it, the Swedes couldn't do it, the French couldn't do it, the Americans couldn’t do it. Remember when the Germans tried to take Moscow during the rasputitsa? And Stalin ordered, blow up the Istra waterworks, to flood the countryside? Because he knew! And that’s why they call you zimniy soldat: like General Winter! Because no one could withstand a Russian winter, except a Russian. I'll go in a rocket ship.”

“A vacuum cleaner, more like,” he says.

Natalia pouts. “If I can survive Russia, I can survive the moon.”

There used to be a soldier who would find the idea of living on the moon fascinating. Thinking about the other soldier makes his head hurt. Kholodnaya voyna, he thinks. That’s what they’ve been calling it. But there was another war, before Natalia. And there will always be another war.

He says, “It’s a stupid idea.”

“Сукин сын! You’re just jealous you didn’t think about living on the moon first.”

Natalia is insufferable sometimes. He goes back to eating mechanically, and she steals a pampushka from right under his nose, then grins like she knows anyone else would be dead in half a second for pulling a trick like that.

“We’re not supposed to know about it yet,” she says. “But I overheard gospodin Zhvanetsky talking to the Direktrisa about Vostok-1. That’s the name of the rocket that went into space, which is stupid. I could have come up with something better than that. Gospodin Kamanin, who authorises the Kosmicheskaya program, made an address talking about gospodin Yuri Gagarin. He was the one they sent up into space, because he was the shortest of them all. But I’m shorter than any of them, see?”

“Right,” he says. He had forgotten what they were talking about.

“Marusya asked Sentsov about it and got in trouble,” says Natalia, mouth full of bread, “because she asked if Kamanin had sent a dog or a person this time. But I was careful and I didn’t get caught eavesdropping.”

“You should be more careful,” he says.

She shrugs. “I’m careful enough not to get caught.”

“You’d need to be especially careful, if you want to be chosen as a kosmonavt.”

Natalia scowls. “I’m _fine_. Besides, gospodin Shostakov told the Direktrisa that I was the best student he had trained in years.”

“Shostakov is an idiot,” he says. Natalia giggles. “He wouldn’t last a half day on the moon.”

That almost sends her into full laughter. “What about the Direktrisa?”

“She would make the moon her bitch,” he says, “within two weeks, and then the Americans would have to creep through the dark like rats, without the moonlight, and their half of the ocean would go as still as ozero Baykal.”

Natalia narrows her eyes. “What about Lenusya?”

“Gosudar Yelena would die immediately, because she would demand that the moon make it possible for her to breathe in space, and then take off her helmet.”

She's enjoying the game now. “Masha?”

“A bear would eat her.”

She slaps his right hand, looking betrayed. “Zima!”

He pretends to be confused. “Don’t tell me—there are no bears in space?”

She looks shrewd, and says, “Oh, I don’t know. I’ll have to tell you when I get there.”

“Kosmonavt Natashka,” he says.

“Kosmonavt Romanova!”

“Of course,” he corrects himself. “My mistake, kosmonavt Romanova.”

Something about the conversation has been nagging at him, in the back of his head like a rotten tooth. It feels uncomfortable, too familiar. He’s done something like this before: the playful teasing, joking around. He can’t remember. Probably it was just earlier, with Natalia. She can talk about anything seemingly endlessly until she wears herself out and falls asleep in a heap, nestled against his shoulder like a fledgling kuropatka chick.

Natalia props her chin on her hands and her elbows on the table, and looks up at him with her big eyes. “If I go to the moon, I’ll make them let me take you with me,” she decides.

It’s a nice fantasy. “I’d take you with me too,” he says, to see her smile.

Kseniya comes into the room then. The girls will go to the firing range next, then return for the dance lessons, then it will be time for the final meal of the day. If he is lucky, and the timing is convenient, he will be able to slip unnoticed into the low-set dining hall while the girls are eating, and spend the meal with them. He still needs to thank Mariya for the little cartoon she did of him wearing the girls’ usual _balet_ uniform, shoes and all; even without decent pencils, she’d managed to make the picture look like him. And he always looks forwards to the new jokes the twins Pravda and Smychka always share when the rukovoditeli who think they should be oprichniki are looking the other way, or the seemingly endless funny stories Zvezde tells. Depending on how well the girls do during their afternoon lessons, there might even be dessert. As stern as Kseniya might be on the surface, she enjoys seeing the girls happy.

“Удачи тебе,” he says.

“I don’t need luck,” says Natalia. She stands up, smoothing the front of her uniform shirt and pushing her red hair behind her ears, and picks up the wooden bowl and spoon from the table.

“Even kosmonavty need luck, Natya.”

She frowns. Kseniya is starting to look impatient, stood there by the door with one hand on her hip and the other resting on her vintovka Mosina.

“I’m not a kosmonavt,” Natalia says, turning up her nose like it’s the stupidest idea anyone’s ever had. “Gospodin Gagarin got there first.”

**Author's Note:**

> There are many conflicting narratives of how the Soldier spent the 1960s, everything from "in stasis" to "[killing JFK](https://66.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx38iguQdv1qmm6lho1_540.jpg)," but I like to think he trained the baby Chernye vdovy for at least a little while. [Маша и медведь](https://russian-crafts.com/russian-folk-tales/masha-bear-tale.html). Natalia says "raketa" (rocket) and the Soldier counters with "[Raketa](https://soviet-postcards.com/post/616757714344886272/raketa-rocket-electric-vacuum-cleaner-vintage)" (a brand of vacuum).


End file.
